Here's Why Suicide Squad Has Been Given A PG-13 Rating

With the proof of concept that was Deadpool, followed by the announcement of a more adult DVD release for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the R-rated superhero movie has become something of a new trend. However, the members of the Suicide Squad aren’t exactly the type to follow the popular crowd, so they’re happy with their more expected PG-13 rating. The MPAA has officially given their stamp to the worst heroes ever and given us their standard generic overview as to why. You likely won’t be shocked to discover that Suicide Squad will contain both suggestive language and violence. Shocking, right?

Entertainment Weekly has the report of the Motion Picture Association of America’s official decision to give the Suicide Squad the PG-13 rating that has become the standard for summer action movies and comic book films in general. Along with the rating, the MPAA gave their synopsis of the reasons for the rating, which give us a general overview of the film’s more adult elements, but are not exactly spoiler territory. The movie will be PG-13 for:

Sequences of violence and action throughout, disturbing behavior, and suggestive content and language.

If there’s anything of note here, it’s the "disturbing behavior" part. One can make an assumption here that either the MPAA doesn’t find the sequences of violence to be disturbing, and/or, there is disturbing behavior in the movie which is not, specifically, violent. Yeah, we’re splitting hairs but they wrote it. We’re just trying to make the MPAA’s gibberish make sense. We’re assuming this does not refer to Jared Leto’s disturbing behavior of sending used condoms and dead animals to his co-stars. Although, we can probably assume, due to those actions, that the disturbing behavior in question is probably mostly from the Joker.

While Suicide Squad director David Ayer has said that he’s open to a potential R-rated sequel, and a sequel is reportedly in development, he has said that the PG-13 rating was always the goal for this movie. While the film did go back and complete reshoots recently, it doesn’t appear that creating scenes that would give the movie an R-rating were considered.

In addition to the upcoming Blu-ray release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Deadpool, next year’s Wolverine 3 (Weapon X?) is also expected to receive an R-rating. While the majority of comic book based movies are likely to remain PG-13 films, if for no other reason than Marvel Studios has said they have no plans to make an R-rated entry in the MCU, it does appear that R-ratings are officially on the table as options when it comes to the mainstream comic book movie world.

They say Suicide Squad will have the appropriate edge to it with a PG-13 rating. Would you rather see an R-rated Squad or do you think the lower rating will still work? Let us know in the comments.